V. I. Lenin

The Capitalist System of Modern Agriculture

FIRST ARTICLE

Social statistics in general and economic statistics in

particular have made tremendous advances during the last two or three

decades. A series of problems, moreover those most fundamental concerning

the economic system of modern states and its development, which were

previously decided on the basis of general considerations and approximate

data, cannot nowadays be analysed at all seriously without taking into

account the mass of data about the whole territory of a given country

collected according to a single definite programme and summed up by expert

statisticians. In particular, the problems of the economics of agriculture,

which arouse particularly many disputes, require answering on the basis of

exact, mass data, the more so since in the European states and in America

it is a growing practice to make periodic censuses covering all the

agricultural enterprises of the country.

In Germany, for example, such censuses were made in 1882, 1895 and the

last in 1907. The importance of these censuses has often been mentioned in

our press, and it is difficult to find a book or article on the economics

of modern agriculture which does not refer to the statistical data on

German agriculture. The last census has already occasioned a fair amount of

noise in both the German and our own press. Writing inKievskaya



Mysl{2}last year, Mr. Valentinov, it will be recalled, loudly

clamoured that this census allegedly refuted the Marxist doctrine and

Kautsky’s views by proving the viability of small-scale production and its

triumph over

large-scale production. Recently, in an article entitled “Tendencies in

Agrarian Evolution in Germany” published inEkonomist

Rossii{3}No. 36 of September 11, 1910, Professor Vobly,

on the basis of the data of the 1907 census, tried to refute the applicability

to agriculture of “the scheme elaborated by Marx in relation to the

development of

industry”{4}and to prove that “small

enterprises not only do not perish in the struggle against large ones in the

sphere of agriculture; on the contrary, each new census registers their success

We think, therefore, it would be opportune to analyse in detail the data of the

1907 census. True, the publication of the materials of this census is not yet

complete; three volumes containingallthe data of the

census{1}have appeared, but a fourth volume devoted to an “exposition of the results of

the census as a whole” has not yet appeared and it is not known whether it

will appear soon. But there are no grounds for postponing a study of theresultsof the census until this concluding volume has appeared, forallthe material is already available, as well as the summary of it,

and it is being widely used in the press.

We shall merely note that to put the question in the form In which it is usually

put, confining oneself almost exclusively to a comparison of the number of

farms of various sizes (in area) and the amount of land they possessed in various years, is an absolutely incorrect approach to the subject. The real

differences between the Marxists and the opponents of Marxism on the agrarian

question are much more deeply rooted. If the aim is to give a complete explanation of the sources of the differences, then attention must be devoted primarily

and most of all to the question of the basic features of the capitalist system

of modern agriculture. It is just on this question that the data of the German

census of June 12, 1907, are particularly valuable. This census

is less detailed on some questions than the earlier censuses of 1882 and 1895

but, on the other hand, it gives for the first time an unprecedented wealth of

data on wage-labour in agriculture. And the use of wage-labour is the chief

distinguishing mark of every kind of capitalist agriculture.

We shall therefore endeavour first of all to give a general picture of the

capitalist system of modern agriculture, relying chiefly on the data of the 1907

German census and supplementing them with the data of the best agricultural

censuses of other countries, namely: the Danish, Swiss, American and the last

Hungarian censuses. As regards the fact which most of all strikes the eye on a

first acquaintance with the results of the census and which is being most talked

about, namely, the reduction in Germany of the number of large farms (large in

agricultural area) and the amount of land they possess, we shall turn to an

examination of this only at the end of our work. For this is one of the

complicated facts which are a function of a series of others, and it is

impossible to understand its significance without first elucidating several

much more important and basic questions.

{1}Statistik des Deutschen Reichs, Band 212, Teil 1a,

1band 2a.

Berufs- und Betriebszählung vom 12. Juni 1907. Landwirtschaftliche

Betriebsstatistik, Berlin 1909 und 1910. (Statistics of the German

State, Vol. 212, Part 1a, 1band

2a. Census of occupations and enterprises of June 12,

1907. Statistics of agricultural production, Berlin, 1909 and

1910.—Ed.)

{2}Kievskaya Mysl(Kiev Thought)—a daily

bourgeois-democratic newspaper published in Kiev from 1908 to 1918,

Mensheviks were among its most active contributors.

Lenin is referring to the article by the liquidator N. Valentinov,

“Concerning the Recent German Census”, published inKievskaya

MyslNo. 308.

{3}Ekonomist Rossii(Russian Economist)—a weekly

bourgeois journal devoted to economic and financial questions in Russia and

abroad; it was published in St. Petersburg from 1909 to 1912.

{4}Karl Marx,Capital, Vol. III, Moscow, 1959, pp. 600–863.